The thefts reached the ears of the Department of Energy’s Office of the Inspector General in Albuquerque on September 30 when lab officials contacted them to say a subcontractor’s employee had stolen some items, reports Fox News.
The Albuquerque Journal broke the story on Friday, saying the items were taken from Technical Area 54 (TA-54), a waste management facility within the boundaries of Los Alamos. The facility is where all contaminated materials are held until they are shipped elsewhere.
Another area, known as Area G, is where large pieces of contaminated material are cut up, and once a tool of any kind is used in this area, or TA-54, it has to be left there because it has become contaminated. According to a search warrant affidavit filed in the U.S. District Court in Albuquerque, there are well-placed signs in both areas warning that the contaminated tools cannot be removed from the respective areas.
The Associated Press is reporting the employee in question, according to the search warrant had “unfettered access” to TA-54 and Area G and was supposed to conduct hourly inspections of waste drums to ensure the right internal temperature was being maintained. The worker also had training in hazardous waste operations, tritium safety, radiation worker and waste disposition critical safety fundamentals, and received site-specific training.
Los Alamos police respond to larceny call the day before
On September 29, the Los Alamos Police Department responded to a larceny call at another site in Los Alamos. The police were called to TA-18, another technical area, where a witness said he had seen someone throwing items out of the trunk of his car into the bushes along the roadside.
The police found a bandsaw, garden hose, Truefit gloves, screwdriver set and conduit, some of them marked “TA-54.” They notified radioactive control technicians to survey the items and area for radioactive contamination. Two people found near the site where the items were found were also checked for contamination. Both individuals and the items tested positive for alpha-emitting isotopes. The two people were taken to the lab’s occupational health clinic for decontamination.
Police also obtained a search warrant for a LANL pickup truck that one of the two people said had a contaminated pair of work gloves in it the week before. While the gloves had gone missing, the truck was contaminated. “The steering wheel, gear shift and passenger door had alpha-emitting isotopes that registered 600 to 1,000 DPMs, or disintegrations per minute, a measurement of the amount of energy emitted from a contaminated area.” The DOE release limit standard is 20 DPM, according to the affidavit.
Not the first time thefts have been reported at LANL
Thefts of radioactive material and computer thumb drive with lab data, are just one instance over the years of the sloppy security at the LANL, and there have been a number of high-level investigations, including Congressional hearings that haven’t done much to shore-up security.
According to local AP affiliate KRQE.com, one major problem has been the cloak of silence the laboratory maintains, going so far as to refuse to give police the names of employees suspected of stealing. This very thing happened in May and again in August of this year when impact wrenches, weed trimmers, and other tools were reported stolen. Police had to close the case when lab officials refused to give them the names of workers who had access to the area.